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Country Bread - Jazzed Up With Chia Seeds

Country Bread - Jazzed Up With Chia Seeds

Was it my childish resistance against praying with St. Jeffrey's faithful congregation, or an unconscious dislike of dealing with a tome - so far I haven't baked a lot from Hamelman's "Bread". Though one bread, the wonderful "5-Grain Sourdough with Rye Sourdough", made it straight into Karin's Bread Hall of Fame, and his "Rye Sourdough with Walnuts" formula I used for testing a 1-step versus a 3-step starter (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19814/interesting-experiment-sourdough-starters).

For my "Equal Opportunity Challenge" I wanted kill two birds with one stone, giving "Bread" another chance, and finding a vehicle for the chia seeds I had just purchased for a bargain price. Therefore I chose a simple white loaf, one of the first formulas of the book: "Country Bread".

Working with the recipe wasn't very difficult. I refrigerated the mature pre-ferment overnight, and upped the amount of water in the dough a bit to accomodate the chia seeds (I didn't soak them, since, according to the description on the tag, "you can eat them directly out of the package"). The dough was slightly sticky, as intended, and I gave it an extra Stretch & Fold right away, and let it ferment for an additional 50 minutes after the last fold.

The result was a very pretty loaf, with a pleasant, slightly nutty taste - for people who don't care too much for sourdough tang. Unfortunately, the Andersons do not belong to these mild mannered goodie-two-shoes, we like our yeasts wild and free!

Therefore, this gentle bread will have to find another home, even jazzed up with chia seeds it is a bit too tame for us.

Comments

I always though chia seeds belonged on little clay pets that you watered to turn green as the sprouts grew. Then, earlier today, I was reading Shiao-Ping's blog and she was talking about how much she liked the texture of the bread that chia seeds had given for one of her fine concoctions. Now you are doing Chia seeds. Did you notice any change in crumb texture in your bread or was it too bland for SD ting, tang, walla, walla, bing, bang folks to notice? I was all set to source some chia seeds, to pair with who knows what other strange things that happened by and now.... I'm not so sure. They don't seem bold enough for tough German stock.

The bread you made has an ungodly crust and lovely crumb you have to admit - even if it misses the mark with the SD tang. By the way the spell checker says chia is not a word and suggests that I replace with it with 'CIA'. So, if the G men show up on your door - you will know why. At least they won't cartch you with hemp seed this time :-)

I'd never heard of Chia seeds up until a few weeks ago. I was researching some additives to my dogs food (I make my own) and read some quality dog foods add chia seeds so I bought a few cups at the local bulk barn. I had some left over and of course came here to read up on adding to bread. I read Shiao-Ping's recipe and was inspired. I can't say I notice much difference in my sourdoughs taste with the added seeds - but the main reason I've added them is because they are supposed to be a very good for you (from www.thechiaseed.com )

Adding just 2 tablespoons of chia seeds to your daily diet will give you approximately 7 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein, 205 milligrams of calcium, anda whopping 5 grams of omega-3!

and I eat a lot of them. On cereal, mixed in yogurt, on top of bagels and in smoothies. The little darlings are tiny but crunchy not hard seeds and they add good texture to anything. I have yet to bake them in anything but that will be soon. I buy mine at a health food store. I do think they are pretty available in those markets.

Without wishing to cause any controversy amongst the faithful congregants and potential newcomers, I suggest that many of Hamelman's formulae, where he uses some yeast as well as natural pre-ferment, can in fact be made without the yeast. The longer ferment then needed gives more flavour which you want...although you hardly need me to remind you of that. Maybe you should have tried a formula from his sourdough sections; this particular recipe seems a bit basic to really cut it for you?

PClark, I always search my favorite discount stores for some rare flours or grains, and was delighted to find Bob's Red Mill chia seed (that I had so far only heard of, but never seen). Good idea, to use them as topping, too.

A quick question. I know you generally retard your doughs, but do you shape them and then let them come up to room temperature (and proof if necessary) before you bake or do you let your bulk dough come up to room temperature and then shape them, proof them some more and bake them. Thanks in advance for info. Pam

If I make rolls or pitas or something small or thin, I found out (accidentally) that it hardly makes any difference in time, those small pieces come to room temperature and rise almost as quickly as de-chilled dough.

For regular sized loaves you can do both, but if you shape them cold, they need the time to warm up and then rise, you save maximal half an hour, and there is always the danger that they develop a drier skin.

I don't like handling cold dough very much, therefore I prefer de-chilling the dough for regular sized breads before I shape them.

It also fits better in my (professional) baking schedule, I can remove the dough containers (I portion the dough for individual breads after mixing) from the fridge when I wake up first time in the morning, and when I get up two hours later, the dough has come to room temperature and I can shape it.

The one dough that always needs more time to rise after de-chilling is Pain a l'Ancienne dough, I take it out of the fridge at 4:00 a.m., and shape it 4 - 5 hours later.

I have missed! You portion the dough before you retard it! That would make all the difference. Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question. That scedule would work perfectly for my lazy day home baking. Pam

If you portion the dough for individual breads (or, in case of rolls or smaller pieces, divide the whole batch at least in halves or thirds), you don't have to do all the dividing and weighing in the morning, and don't degas (heavier) doughs too much that shouldn't.

I use mostly inexpensive square 1-qt. plastic containers from the supermarket, because they stack really well and take much less space than round ones. I size my breads to fit, staying in the 700 - 950 g range, so that they don't burst the lids overnight. The square containers make it especially easy to shape sandwich loaves or batârds, because they are preshaped.

said she isn't going to eat any bread that has seeds in it that grows green hair on a clay; Elvis, pets or farm animals - Kids! I told her it was probably a key ingredient in her acne cream. I got that look from her.

What a great idea...I like the idea of having them pre-shaped in and by the reefer. I use a rectangular plastic container for any stretch and fold bread and this just takes it one step furthur. Thanks for the great hint. Pam

Was a huge bin of Hemp Seeds!!! Who would have guessed? I thought Chia seeds at $5.99 a pound was outright robbery but the hemp seeds were $9.99 a pound - ouch. I couldn't believe it. They acftually replaced my WW pastry flour bin with hemp seeds and my High Gluten flour bin with Chia seeds. Both of the flours used to be $1/49 a pound when not on sale. I made the bin re-fill guy go into the back room, dig around and get me one pound each of WWPF and HGF just out of spite. What is the world coming to? Wierd Seeds in place of normal flours? Go figure.

It seems that chia and hemp are just becoming the hip "in" seeds. Fine by me, if the prices goes down because of more popular demand. And I just heard from the owner of the natural food store that sells my breads, that lately the ones with seeds are the hottest sellers.

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